252 PLOTUS ANHINGA. 



the water being apparently not greater than that 

 occasioned by the gliding of an eel. 



Formerly the darter was considered by voyagers as 

 an anomalous production, a monster partaking of the 

 nature of the snake and the duck ; and, in some ancient 

 charts which I have seen, it is delineated in all the 

 extravagance of fiction. 



From Mr William Bartram we have received the 

 folio wing account of the subject of our history : 



" Here is in this river,* and in the waters all over 

 Florida, a very curious and handsome bird, the people 

 call them snake birds ; I think I have seen paintings of 

 them on the Chinese screens and other Indian pictures; 

 they seem to be a species of colymbus, but far more 

 beautiful and delicately formed than any other that I 

 have ever seen. They delight to sit in little peaceable 

 communities, on the dry limbs of trees, hanging over 

 the still waters, with their wings and tails expanded, I 

 suppose to cool and air themselves, when at the same 

 time they behold their images in the watery mirror. 

 At such times, when we approach them, they drop off 

 the limbs into the water, as if dead, and for a minute or 

 two are not to be seen ; when on a sudden, at a great 

 distance, their long slender head and neck appear, like 

 a snake rising erect out of the water; and no other part 

 of them is to be seen when swimming, except sometimes 

 the tip end of their tail. In the heat of the day they 

 are seen in great numbers, sailing very high in the air 

 orer lakes and rivers. 



" I doubt not but if this bird had been an inhabitant 

 of the Tiber in Ovid's days, it would have furnished 

 him with a subject for some beautiful and entertaining 

 metamorphoses. I believe they feed entirely on fish, 

 for their flesh smells and tastes intolerably strong of it: 

 it is scarcely to be eaten, unless one is constrained by 

 insufferable hunger. They inhabit the waters of Cape 

 Fear Kiwr, and, southerly, East and West Florida." -f- 



The river St Juan, East Florida. 



f BAKTRAM'S Travels, p. 132. MS. in the possession of the 

 author [Mr Ord.] 



